03 August 2007

I came here to thank Theresa Duncan for getting me into Rupert Sheldrake and posthumously inspiring me to dust off all my old conspiracy books. I wanted to tell her, "It's been real". Then I came across this at from The LA Times and now I'm distracted all over again. "Just when I thought I was out..."

7 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I know!! And it's not going to stop - media bistro has Lee & Coe talking about chasing the story and Vanity Fair and some New York mags are also going to be running with it. I can't put my finger on what exactly it is, but there is something in this story that captures people. Dream's End was right about the 'rabbit hole' in the sense that you fall into this other world when you start reading about this - and you get sucked into it. Is it the mystery? Whatever it is, it is fascinating. I've been enjoying your blogging, too. All the bestCiara

Kate Coe's piece has some interesting points, but the integrity of her incredibly simplistic "conclusion" (which is essentially that "she had it coming") is severely compromised by her obvious attempts to impugn Theresa's character. Theresa accomplished more in her 40 years than Coe will do her whole life - and Coe's apparent envy about this shines through every paragraph.

I had to pick and choose at Coe's first piece on Theresa - like a turkey the day after Thanxgiving.

Granted, hers was the first story of its kind on this issue and I appreciated the insight and the anecdotes that until then we who weren't friends with the couple weren't aware of.

However, I must say I had to take the story with a pretty large grain of salt.

I had to sort of wash Coe's ulterior motives and pregnant-with-intent slant off the words to be left with just the facts I was interested in absorbing. It was well written and very interesting and fascinating but it certainly wasn't an unbiased piece of journalism.

And therefore I found that mediabistro piece to be totally gratuitous and unnecessary and quite frankly, late to the party.

Chris Lee and Kate Coe sitting back, resting on their laurels, and patting each other on the back? Let's not get crazy, folks. This wasn't Walter Cronkite and Edward Murrow talking about their days reporting in Viet Nam.

That piece was really laughable and just not necessary at all. I don't even understand WHY they felt the need to publish that honestly. Maybe they just felt left out?

And now to stir the pot even more, LAist is suggesting that maybe possibly a little maybe not but what if it is actually a 'game', which will only wreck people's heads more: well, even if it wasn't intentional, it is a bit of a game now, and isn't it a fun tribute to people we didn't know, seems to be the suggestion.

I don't know from Coe or Lee, I think there's a lot of gratuitious bashing going - sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and you have reporters on the art/pop culture beat whose lines have crossed their subject but have no real malice or shaded opinion. I did think, though, Lee's expanded piece smacked a little of the Scientologists protesting too much; Lee's written a few pieces before about Hollywood Scientologists but I am unsure if he is for or against them. So the question is, is he against them and attempting to expose their nefarious reach, or is he for them and colluding with their nefarious reach? Or is a cigar just a cigar?

Do you think The Smoking Gun will have the 12 page brief Blake had prepared, referred to in Lee's article?

One thing about the LAist piece, at least they were banging on about Florida license plates and got it right about Iowa plates. That was a little, repeated detail that nagged elsewhere.

Re Coe & Lee's duet, I do think it was a bit of, look at us, we broke the story first & scooped the bigger fish, don't forget us when you're reading the glossy cover story. When reporters interview reporters before the story has run its course, what does that tell you?